Microsoft accused of deleting incriminating emails
Microsoft accused of deleting incriminating emails
A U.S. District Judge has demanded that Microsoft's legal department's archives should be searched after it was accused of deliberately deleting potentially incriminating emails.
Burt.com Inc. claims that Microsoft stole its own multimedia software for moving audio and video more quickly over the Internet and destroyed emails that should be used for vital evidence.
The federal Judge, J. Frederick Motz, has ordered the search to look for evidence that Microsoft lawyers advised Vice President James Allchin to adopt a policy of deleting emails.
Some commentators have stated that if this evidence is found to be true, it could mean that some Microsoft employees perjured themselves during prior sworn testimonies.
It has already been discovered in 1997 that a written policy was distributed within Microsoft advising employees to delete emails after 30 days due to legal issues.
Microsoft has defended itself by saying this policy was introduced because the company wanted to make it easier to convince employees that the deletion of emails after 30 days would save computer memory space.
But Motz is suspicious about gaps in emails within this case. Burst believes that Microsoft has held back emails which should have been available when Burst and Microsoft discussed important information about valuable video-streaming.
The Judge has ordered Microsoft to search a legal department computer, a server and backup tapes.
Microsoft has already reached settlements of antitrust and unfair competition lawsuits with nine states and the District of Columbia which amount to US$1.5 billion. In 2001, Microsoft was found to have illegally abused its monopoly over Windows operating system software.
In this particular case, Allchin has already defended Microsoft's email policy in a sworn testimony, by claiming that he told people that unless they have business reasons to keep emails, they should not keep the email.
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